Immobilizing biomolecules provides the advantage of observing them individually for extended time periods, which is impossible to accomplish for freely diffusing molecules in solution. In order to immobilize individual protein molecules, we encapsulated them in polymeric vesicles made of amphiphilic triblock copolymers and tethered the vesicles to a cover slide surface. A major goal of this study is to investigate polymeric vesicles with respect to their suitability for protein-folding studies. The fact that polymeric vesicles possess an extreme stability under various chemical conditions is supported by our observation that harsh unfolding conditions do not perturb the structural integrity of the vesicles. Moreover, polymerosomes prove to be permeable to GdnHCl and, thereby, ideally suited for unfolding and refolding studies with encapsulated proteins. We demonstrate this with encapsulated phosphoglycerate kinase, which was fluorescently labeled with Atto655, a dye that exhibits pronounced photoinduced electron transfer (PET) to a nearby tryptophan residue in the native state. Under unfolding conditions, PET was reduced, and we monitored alternating unfolding and refolding conditions for individual encapsulated proteins.
It's not easy being green: Real-time visualization of labeled ribosomes and de novo synthesized green fluorescent protein molecules using single-molecule-sensitive fluorescence microscopy demonstrates that the mutant GFPem is produced with a characteristic time of five minutes. Fluorescence of the fastest GFP molecules appears within one minute (see picture).
In the present work both FTIR and Flame AAS were jointly used to investigate the uptake of pollutants by the aquatic plant water hyacinth. The plant was immersed alive in synthetic standard solutions containing acetic acid up to 0.40 M for 19.0 h. Then it was immersed in 0.10 M acetic acid for different periods of time up to 210.0 h. Later on, both the acetic acid treated beside non treated ones was immersed separately in 1.0, 3.0 and 5.0 mg l -1 concentrates derived from Cd and Pb up to 240.0 h. The obtained results demonstrate the capability of the plant to remove both organic and inorganic pollutants. It is recommended that the plant be used to remediate Pb and Cd as well as other organic pollutants containing COOH. The results also indicate that the selectivity for Pb is higher than that of Cd. Additionally, pentahydrated divalent metal acetate model is presented to describe the coordination of the divalent metal ion with the acetic acid.
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